Well, the plan today was to get all the handwork done on the garments I’ve been working on in the past two weeks so that I could take photos of them outside. I got as far as a turquoise top I had to do a hem on, and then became completely discouraged.
I’ve got me a wadder: something that you wad up and throw in the trash.
It wasn’t necessarily all that bad looking before I hand washed it and threw it in the dryer. There were some wrinkles here and there that I couldn’t get out, and the zipper looked a little odd in the back since it was a heavier weight than the fabric, a silky charmeuse-like discovery in my mom’s sewing closet. And there were the token water spots from my leaky iron. So, washing it and then throwing it in the dryer for a bit seemed like a logical solution. After all, that’s what I did before I cut out the fabric and it came out looking great. Not so much now.
The featherweight interfacing came loose, which I guess was partly my fault when I was fusing it. It seemed bonded, but even the slight agitation that I used when washing it by hand was enough to weaken the glue. This has happened to me before with featherweight, so there’s probably something I’m doing wrong when I’m fusing it versus heavier weights.
The darts look atrocious: all twisted underneath and puckery. The sleeves are puckery. The zipper, a pucker disaster. And the stitching on the hem, which I painstakingly put in by hand for two hours this morning, is so obvious looking and cheap. I tried pressing everything, but it really seems like a lost cause.
It’s not a bad pattern, really, and it fit me perfectly without having to do a SBA. It’s the fabric that sucked. Gorgeous, yes, but extremely tricky. I think I ended up ripping *almost* everything out and doing it a second time. And I always pick these fabrics because I don’t want to stick to cotton cotton cotton all the freakin’ time. It’s like another top I finished a week or so ago: slippery fabric that doesn’t press nicely, that shows every teeny tiny imperfection. I’ll be showing that one later. And I wanted to do this pattern again, with a different neckline in another slippery fabric. I’m not so sure now, but I’m almost determined to do so just to see if I can succeed the second time around. These are meant to be for work, and I can’t look like I just rolled out of bed in something I wore out the night before.
So no photos today. Maybe I’ll be in a better mood tomorrow.
